Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [story read aloud .txt] 📗

this situation.” He looked at Dehan, like she might have an answer. “A good professional with a lovely wife, two great kids, why would he get himself caught up in something so… tawdry?”

He stood, shaking his head. “Well, you two will be wanting to examine that laptop, and I must be getting home with the wine if I don’t want to face a hearing of my own. Proceed as you see fit, but keep me posted.”

He hurried on ahead of us, down the stairs, across the wet floor and out into the wet night. We followed at a more forlorn pace and when the inspector had disappeared, I said, “I think we’ve caused enough trouble here, Dehan. Let’s go home and see what bombshells lie in Pandora’s laptop.”

And we too stepped out into the wet, November night.

* * *

While I opened the wine and peeled and cut the potatoes to make fries, Dehan had a hot shower and came down in dry jeans and a sweatshirt, toweling her hair.

“I just hope to Christ she used an operating system prior to Windows 8.”

I eyed her. “Why?”

“Windows 7 and earlier didn’t use a sign in page. Let’s hope she used an email client too. Or we’re going to have to hand this over to the techs.” She plugged in the cable and sat down, thinking aloud: “Twenty sixteen. Windows 10 was launched that year, there was never a Windows 9, did you know that? And 8 was really unpopular. It was crap. Millions of people actually downgraded back to Windows 7 because they hated 8 and 10 that much. So I guess we have an even chance that she might…”

The familiar Windows jingle sounded and she smiled. “It’s Windows 7, and dude! She has Thunderbird.”

“So her emails are downloaded automatically to the laptop?”

“Yup.”

I put the fries in the hot oil, dried my hands and pulled up a chair beside her. She opened the Thunderbird app and after a moment, the emails were listed. There were a couple of thousand of them, all but the last five or six marked as read. The last few were dated between the 4th and 9th November. I flopped back in my chair. Dehan voiced my thoughts.

“Where do we begin? At five minutes per email, that’s going to be a hundred and sixty-seven hours. If we worked twelve hours a day nonstop it would take us… two weeks.”

I looked at her a moment, then laughed. “We don’t need to do that. Take ten emails, identify the names that are not relevant. Put the ones that are not relevant into a folder. Keep going until you find a name that raises a flag. Then focus on that name.”

She was nodding vigorously before I’d finished, saying, “Yeahyeahyeah! You’re right.”

“Also,” I said, and stood. “Before you do anything else, search for Rod, see if it brings up an email address.”

“Yeah, I know, I was going to do that!”

“Sure you were.”

“Go away and let me work.”

While she searched for any reference to Rod in Celeste’s emails, and while the fries fried, I made an avocado salad with artichoke hearts, diced tomato and a simple dressing of olive oil and Maldon sea salt. By the time I got to putting the griddle on to heat, I heard her sigh.

“OK,” she said, “here they are.” I heard the printer whir and clunk and start disgorging pages. She stood and leaned on the breakfast bar. “There are only six.” She said. “But they are pretty intense.” She went and collected the emails from the printer and brought them over. “They only cover a week, and they are from six months before she died.”

While I read, she poured two glasses of wine and placed one next to me.

The first was from Lenny, and it was a reply to a long email from her complaining about how her father and Samuel controlled and pressured her, how they were constantly complaining to her and trying to force her to go to church and live in a way that made no sense to her. She was desperate to get out of the house and away from them. She had, she said, nobody to talk to. She ended up by apologizing for writing to him and saying that she had enjoyed chatting to him outside the church, and it was nice that he had visited her dad a couple of times recently. She hoped he would come again.

His reply was brief but friendly, rather than friendly but brief.

Hey, Celeste! Nice surprise to hear from you. How’s the family? Yeah, I enjoyed our chat too. Don’t often get to talk to somebody who ‘gets it’. So many sheep, right? I’d definitely like to drop in and see your dad (and you!)  if I’m in the area. Hope to catch Samuel in too, though I’m not always sure when I can get a free half hour.

The next email from her told him exactly when Samuel was out and how her dad liked to sleep for a couple of hours after lunch. Then it suggested that that might be a good time because they could talk freely in her room without worrying about Samuel and her dad.

The next email was not from Lenny’s email account. It was from rod_wheeler.

Hi Babe, listen, I don’t want to go all cloak and dagger on you but I can’t receive emails like that at my personal email account. Most people just would not understand and I am not exaggerating if I tell you it could cost me my job and my marriage. But I gotta tell you, it put a big damn smile on my face. I can’t think of a way I’d rather spend my lunch hour…

It went on in that vein. The next were obviously after their encounter and it was obvious that they had